Rebellions are Built on Queer Hope. Andor’s Conflicting Queer Politics

Jędrzej Burszta

Star Wars has been a franchise stubbornly resistant to queer readings. This is not unlike other major blockbuster science fiction productions, which have rarely diverged into examinations of futures not defined by heteronormativity. This is contrary to much of Anglophone SF literature, which has enjoyed quite a rich repertoire of works that challenge the taken-for-granted ‘straightness’ of fantastic extrapolations.[1] However, the cinematic part of Star Wars storytelling has been generally seen as politically inept in terms of depicting any unconventional representations of gender and sexuality. To put it in even more blunt terms, Star Wars has rarely been sexy at all; however you want to put it: eroticism, sexuality, or just sex-as-fucking, is definitely not a sphere that enjoyed much reflection in George Lucas’ vision of “a galaxy, far, far away.” Of course, there have been glimpses of romances at its centre (Leia and Han, Padme and Anakin), and even more unrealised romances in the sequel trilogy (Ray and Kylo, Ray and Finn, Finn and Rose, Finn and Poe…), only hinted at or connoted to be then disregarded by the next director.

Gigabytes of commentaries have been since leveled against the new trilogy’s messy and erratic approach to its politics of diversity in representation, as indeed the 2015 premiere of The Force Awakens coincided with the eruption of online vitriol – racist and sexist at its core, if we remember the outrage that exploded after the publication of a photo suggesting stormtroopers could be Black – we now refer to as the mind-boggling and reactive “culture wars” in fandom culture. Putting aside the story of how corporate forces at the helm of Lucasfilm failed their actors in several horrible instances of online harassment and trolling campaigns, the desire to “make up” to some parts of the fandom was met with a lukewarm (at best) shrug. The inclusion of the now-infamous, blink-and-you’ll-miss it “lesbian kiss” by two background extras in The Rise of Skywalker cemented the fate of the franchise’s ambition at foregrounding Star Wars as an unprovoking and reactionary expression of dated liberal multiculturalist fantasy.

Those fans who desired more progressive strands of imaginative worldbuilding – or just more strange, perplexing, “deviant” in ways much queer popular culture can fabulously be without falling into the good/bad representation debacle – had to turn to Star Wars tie-in media: computer games, novels, and comic books. Although the Expanded Universe (EU) was rebranded as “Legends” in 2014, two years after Lucas had sold the rights to the brand to the Disney Corporation, a growing number of seemingly extinct lore has gradually found its way to new productions.[2] Upon obtaining the rights to the franchise, an official statement issued by Disney noted the importance of the now-derelict EU, acknowledging that until 2012, ‘more than 17,000 characters inhabiting several thousand planets spanning 20,000 years offers infinite inspiration and opportunities.’[3] Unfortunately, almost none of those thousands of side characters were queer. There were a few exceptions, albeit not necessarily notable – at least not to fans unwilling to perform archeological digs through Wookiepedia entries in search of obscure pieces of lore.  Such sources suggest, for instance, that the gloriously deviant Hutts might have been indeed even more queer by way of their nonbinary gender (they have been re-gendered in the new canon as distinct males and females).[4] Another exception appears in  the 2008 massive role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic, which introduced a “queer planet” of Makeb, seemingly the sole location in the game’s world where players could engage in queer romances with NPCs. (The latter was possible only after the player purchased one of the additional DLCs, without which The Old Republic still remained an unequivocally straight galaxy, a typical neoliberal cash-grab move that naturally angered quite a few queer players).[5]

Since sex and sexuality is not part of the grander Star Wars mythology, it was a truly welcomed surprise to witness how the first season of Andor defiantly trampled all these narrative conventions by setting the beginning of Cassian’s journey in a brothel. So, not only is sex in Star Wars – there is also sex work (located outside of Jabba’s Palace). Tony Gilroy’s promise to bring more nuance and maturity to Star Wars worldbuilding, politics, and ideological messaging also turned out to have a decidedly sex-positive attitude to how matters of the carnal politics are concerned. A few episodes later, Bix meets for a nightly rendezvous with her partner that is all but not suggestive, and Cassian himself enjoys a casual fling right before he is captured and transferred to Narkina 5. These subtly deployed mood shifts in how sex is depicted as being part of the mundane world of the working-class residents of the galaxy certainly caught the attention of many viewers, while at the same time proving not to be a distraction from engaging with “the proper” political message of the show.

In terms of queer representation, Andor finally introduced the first on-screen non-heteronormative characters, who at the same time form the first canonical same-sex romantic pairing – the Rebel spies and saboteurs Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) and Cinta Kaz (Varada Sethu), which was enough for some commentators to declare the Disney+ series as the first openly queer narrative in the franchise. While in Season One, Vel and Cinta were established as lovers, their relationship became visibly strained after the Aldhani heist, which saw most of the Rebel team perish. Not only are they sent off by Luthen Rael to different corners of the galaxy – Vel reuniting with her cousin Mon Mothma on Coruscant and Cinta travelling to Ferrix to pursue Andor – but when the two finally have a chance to meet, their conversation interestingly downplays their queer romance by pushing a class-conscious perspective to the fore. Cinta, traumatised after her entire family was brutally executed by a squad of stormtroopers, seems to challenge Vel’s feelings for her as much as she questions her lover’s motivation for joining the Rebellion. She openly addresses their differing class backgrounds in a tense dialogue right before Ferrix becomes the site of a brutal anti-imperial protest fueled by Maarva Andor’s riveting self-eulogy. In the end, Vel and Cintra’s queer romance is not treated by the filmmakers as a grand gesture of queer allyship, while at the same time it is not downplayed or made irrelevant for the wider plot. On the contrary, their differing motivations for rebelling against the fascist regime are thoughtfully explored, even if briefly, to make their personal sacrifice one that aligns with the broader political messaging about class struggle that the show is making. Their queerness is but one facet of their rebellion.

At the beginning of Season Two, a year after the Ferrix short-lived uprising, Vel and Cinta are still separated, pushed from one another by “the cause.” They glimpse each other’s presence at the Chandrillan wedding, before Cinta is sent by Luthen to eliminate Tay Kolma. Their diverging roles within the burgeoning Rebellion speak more about their social class than any personal misgivings between two lovers. Both are pawns utilised by Luthen: while Vel can still “pass” as part of the galactic aristocracy without compromising her role as an agent-provocateur, for Cinta the path is cemented. She is ultimately disposable and will serve the cause as long as Luthen requires it. Andor thus posits its queer protagonists as tragic not because of their sexuality but rather by their proximity to class privilege and their resulting roles within the Rebellion. The two finally have a chance to meet again when they are both sent to the planet Ghorman to help orchestrate a covert strike on Imperial forces. The episode ends with Cinta’s death. Although some commentators have claimed her demise at the hands of a trigger-happy but inexperienced member of the Ghorman Front as an exemplification of the tired “bury your gays” trope, such a reading obscures the broader political messaging of the show when it comes to depicting the realities of class-based galactic warfare. Cinta’s unceremonious senseless death is not in any way different from the fates of her fallen comrades from the Aldhani heist – Karis Nemik, Taramyn Barcona, or Lieutenant Gorn – who all perished during the raid without much heroic fanfare. Their deaths are similar in the sense that they are subservient to the larger cause, and personal happiness, even among queers, is ultimately an individual relationship that is sacrificed for an understanding of the primacy of collective action.

In her famous essay ‘Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?’, originally published in 1997, American political scientist Cathy J. Cohen argued for the need to rethink and reformulate queer politics in a direction contrary to much of queer activism of its time, which she rightfully regarded as too assimilationist in its perceived goals and strategies. Instead of trying to squeeze into existing, dominant structures of power, she wrote, a radical reorientation of queer politics should seek ‘to transform the basic fabric and hierarchies that allow systems of oppression to persist and operate efficiently.’[6] Building on previous writings of influential Black feminist writers such as Audre Lorde, Kimberlé Crenshaw, or Angela Davis, Cohen passionately voiced her support for a more nuanced and intersectional approach to oppression and discrimination, noting that queer theory’s conceptualization of sexual expression as fluid, malleable, and inherently subversive has paradoxically become essentialised by much of mainstream LGBT+ activism, particularly in the West. Her critique focused on what she considered  a politically ineffective but nonetheless reinforced dichotomy between the oppressed and the oppressors, according to which ‘all heterosexuals are represented as dominant and controlling and all queers are understood as marginalized and invisible.’[7]

Eschewing identity-based gay and lesbian politics anchored within the more mainstream segment of the LGBT+ movement, Cohen asked whether queer activism could potentially turn away from both civil rights and liberal-inspired frameworks and instead adopt a decidedly Left perspective that would require a broadening of the term ‘queer.’ This did not mean rejecting gender nonconformity and sexual non-normativity as its defining traits – even if she was conscious of the ways in which sexual fluidity, transgression, indeed various ‘queer ways of life’ are inherently foreshadowed, in Western societies, by class privilege – but opening it to other marginal and oppressed groups that only seemingly may be viewed as belonging to those privileged because of their (supposed) heteronormativity. As Cohen argues, ‘Specifically, if we pay attention to both historical and current examples of heterosexual relationships that have been prohibited, stigmatized, and generally repressed, we may begin to identify those spaces of shared or similar oppression and resistance that provide a basis for radical coalition work.’[8] Importantly, and undoubtedly provocatively, Cohen pointed to single Black mothers as a vivid example of what she envisioned as ally ‘deviants.’ Stigmatised in the US as so-called ‘welfare queens’ with their families pathologised by the now-infamous Moynihan report published in 1965, single Black mothers represented for her a break within uniform heterosexuality. Despite not necessarily being ‘queer’ in the transgressive and poststructuralist variety, they were nonetheless subjected to racist and classist oppression by nearly every segment of the American public.

Cohen’s provocative intervention formulated at the tail end of the 1990s came to my mind while thinking about the political landscape envisioned in Andor, especially in the second season, which sees the ragtag groups of rebels dispersed around the galaxy finally turn into the proper Rebel Alliance, with their iconic secret base located on Yavin 4. In what follows, I wish to think about the possible intersections between the series’ stark anti-fascist and anti-imperialist stance, already discussed at length in the first volume, and radical queer politics. My argument about the inherent queerness of the Rebel Alliance does not follow representational politics. In other words, my intention is not to necessarily look for other glimpses or traces of queer sexualities among the series’ protagonists, but instead take a step back and think about the relationship between privilege and power as depicted in Andor through the complex interlocking of class, gender, and sexuality.

To state the obvious: one of the key metaphors for the emerging Rebellion, as it is explored consistently throughout both seasons of Andor, has been the notion of “living double lives,” not at all uncommon for queers in our corner of the galaxy as well. Both seasons of Andor creatively mine this sentiment through the parallel stories of several characters who join the struggle at different points in time and, more importantly, who come from very diverse social and political backgrounds, and are all forced to secrecy by the ever-present Imperial threat represented by the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB). Chief among them is, of course, Mon Mothma, the dissident senator from Chandrila and future leader of the Rebellion, who symbolises the idealistic side of the struggle as a politician heavily invested in democracy. Her characterisation, at first glance, seems to follow a quite normative framework defined by class privilege: she comes from an uber-wealthy aristocratic family from Chandrila – one of the Core systems in the galaxy, located at its centre – and leads a decidedly heteronormative lifestyle marked by marriage and motherhood. However, already in Season One, the cracks in this model life begin to show, as her husband Perrin is shown to be nothing more than a bored socialite disinterested in politics, forcing her to lead a “double life” even among her closest circle. But even more striking is her strained relationship with her daughter Leida, who seems not to care about anything but following their home planet's traditional customs. Both Perrin and Leida subtly oppose Mon’s growing independence: the former by acting as a burden, and the latter by later being transformed into an unknowing asset leveraged by her mother. This is an issue finally resolved in the first arc of the second season, which presents the lavish wedding ceremony on Chandrila. Although much of the impetus of this arc arguably has to do with depicting the crumbling idealism of Mon Mothma as she becomes “tainted” by the realist politics of Luthen’s machinations and the practical necessities of insurgence tactics, the three episodes devote a lot of time to also posit the Senator as someone opposing the traditional customs of her home planet.

Chandrila is presented as a wealthy and politically important planet that nonetheless follows very strict rules on marriage, which is traditionally arranged by two families. The wedding arc situates Mothma’s rebellion as being partially fueled by her opposition to these traditional patriarchal structures of power as much as it posits it as a turning point on her path to assuming a leadership position. Her class privilege allows her to fund the different strands of rebel cells around the galaxy, but the cost is also of deeply personal nature. Mothma’s entitlement stems in part from obeying the heterosexual imperative so strongly determined by Chandrilan customs. This goes up to the point where she uses her supposedly past lover, Tay Kolma, to secure further funding for Luthen’s ongoing galaxy-wide intrigue. The wedding arc puts her conflicting position at full display. She is in a vulnerable position: forced into conformity with her daughter’s desire to follow traditional customs, Mothma uses her privilege by sacrificing her family to be able to pursue her goal of resisting the fascist regime of the Emperor. Her decision is a powerful moment in the series, but one that also puts her on a path of genuine transformational politics, as Mothma’s use of class privilege and power finally aligns her with the other marginalised Rebels who have joined the struggle at great personal costs.

The true Rebel Alliance that forms on Yavin 4 is a coalition movement that is made up of characters who are minoritised by the fascist system of the Empire in many different ways. It is a shared resistance of those who are oppressed also because of their non-normative ways of being, living, and loving. Bix and Andor, Vel and Cinta, Luthen and Kleya, and Mon Mothma are all characters whose struggle not with their sexuality – as it is not, it seems, something that is a source of discrimination in Star Wars worldmaking – but by their common experience of being marginalised by different axes of normative structures. Their “queerness” can be read as an effect of a coalitional framework for revolutionary politics, that is not universalising personal struggles but is rather based on an opposition to the ideal of “respectability,” at least as it is reimagined in Star Wars. This reading allows us to understand Mon Mothma’s final ascent among the Rebels as an aristocrat-in-hiding, by the end of the second season, as a symbol for how this queered alliance ultimately rearticulates issues connecting resistance and political dissent with a questioning of normativity, tradition, and class-based privilege. Such an understanding of “queerness” as the one proposed here opens up more interesting questions about how truly transformational policies aimed at political and social change can be imagined, even within a narrative space that does not necessarily fit existing patterns of queer representation.  

By the end of its narrative run, however, Andor unfortunately cannot sustain the radically queer potential of its revolutionary politics. Despite their consistent portrayal as equal partners who remain marginalised even among the growing outcasts of rebels on Yavin 4 – symbolised by spatially removing them from the main base, to a separate house somewhere in the moon’s jungle – the ending of Cassian’s and Bix’s arc ultimately falls back on worn-out cultural tropes. Bix splits from Cassian, seemingly to liberate him so that he can fulfill his role in the Rebellion, as envisioned by the mysterious Force healer precog introduced in the season. This, of course, is really a narrative attempt at bridging together the series and its prequel-sequel film, as Andor neatly ties everything into a moving end sequence that sets Cassian on his path towards Rogue One: a path that ends with his death. His ultimate sacrifice on Scarif is, however, made even more tragic with the final reveal of Bix cradling a child on what seems to be the planet Mina-Rau from where she was rescued at the beginning of the season.

The reveal that Cassian unknowingly became a father is posited as a hopeful ending for the series. Tony Gilroy has stated in an interview that he felt this final twist was earned, even if it is a bit corny in its surprising evocation of more traditional Star Wars storytelling. At the same time, however, the ending follows what queer theorist Lee Edelman famously described as ‘reproductive futurism’: a vision of politics that ‘perpetuates as reality a fantasy frame intended to secure the survival of the social in the Imaginary form of the Child.’[9] It is a trap of political imagination that ultimately makes any type of politics oriented at futurity necessarily operate within a heteronormative logic. Bix’s and Andor’s child becomes the symbol of hope for the Rebellion and viewers alike; it is yet another fatherless Child in the franchise whose existence is predicated upon the logic that equates hopeful politics with a reproduction of the old system. The more radical queer potential of the dissident rebels who form a movement against the class-based system of oppression represented by the Empire is deflated. It is moved back closer to the original trilogy’s insistence on defeating fascists only to return the galaxy to its original political setting. Cassian’s child represents not hope for real change, a true transformation of the galaxy, but merely of changing it back to the democracy that has failed it in the past. In the end, the Rebels on Yavin 4 who band together do it under the official title of the Alliance to Restore the Republic – not remake or reform it, but replace one hegemonic vision with another. The question of whether there will be more space for queer world-making in the future of Star Wars thus still remains open.

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[1] Alexis Lothian, Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility (NYU Press, 2018), p. 175–76.

[2] Dominuic H. Nardi, “Canonical Legends: How the Expanded Universe (Selectively) Lives on TV,” in The Transmedia Franchise of Star Wars TV, edited by Dominic J. Nardi and Derek R. Sweet (Springer International Publishing, 2020), p. 175–99.

[3] https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-to-acquire-lucasfilm-ltd

[4] The EU novel Scourge by Jeff Grubb specifies that, “the idea of calling one [Hutt] male or female was usually left to the observer. The Hutts themselves seemed to be unconcerned about whether they were male or female at any moment.” Quoted in: Chris Any, “Queer Representations In Star Wars,” ArtMagazine, April 1, 2017: https://medium.com/artmagazine/queer-representations-in-star-wars-ca560aab3725

[5] Megan Condis, Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture (University of Iowa Press, 2018), p. 84.

[6] Cathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”, in Black Queer Studies. A Critical Anthology, eds. E. Patrick Johnson and Meg G. Henderson (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005), p. 21.

[7] Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens”, p. 25.

[8] Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens”, p. 38.

[9] Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Duke University Press, 2004), p. 14.